A very cold start to the day for FP3 was followed by a highly dramatic FP4 in which several riders, including Alex Rins, crashed in extremely wet conditions on turns 7, 8 and 9. Eventually the red flag was flown and the qualifying sessions were delayed.

The heavy rain made the already tricky track extremely tough to tackle but Alex Rins, not long after his FP4 crash, kept his focus to perform brilliantly in Q1 and improve his lap time to join his team-mate in Q2.

In Q2 both riders exited the pits will full wet tyres. Alex Rins lost a lap early in the session after a run off, but was still able to place himself in tenth place. Meanwhile, Andrea Iannone was keen to grab a good grid spot and managed 7th as the chequered flag flew on the session.

Davide Brivio - Team Manager
“Of course it was a tricky and difficult afternoon with the rain and the sessions delayed. In the end Andrea was able to qualify 7th and that’s OK, it’s a good position for the race. Alex recovered really well from a difficult situation and he improved a lot in the rain, he was able to move from Q1 to Q2 and managed to finish 10th. So we recovered very well from this morning. The start positions aren’t bad, especially if we’re able to find some good pace. And if it rains tomorrow it will be OK for us in terms of feeling comfortable in those conditions.”

Andrea Iannone
“The conditions were really difficult today during the last part of FP4 and throughout qualifying. I think tomorrow if it rains like that, it might not be possible to race. I hope that if it does rain tomorrow it will be more ‘standard’ conditions, but it seems that it doesn’t drain very quickly. It was difficult to control the situation because we all have aqua-planing on the braking points, and in QP almost 80% of the track was dry but some parts were very wet. But let’s see what happens tomorrow, we hope it will not be so bad.”

Alex Rins
“When I left the box, on the first out lap, I saw that the straight was covered in water but I thought it must be OK because Race Direction would have put the red flag out if it was very dangerous. But when I arrived at full gas the bike was aqua-planing and I saw the wall coming so I decided to jump off the bike, and then many other riders crashed there. We made some changes on the bike today, and we improved in some of the areas where we were losing out, so that was positive. Tomorrow we’ll start in the Top 10 so we hope to make a good race from there and stay with the front group.”